Having a little go just carrying out some minor work on this site. I realize that my site has 3 style sheets which basically govern the look of the entire site. Ideally one would be best. That would allow me to change the style of the entire site super quick. Basically allowing me to change per season or whenever I wish.

Done some mods to the wp template so its not hard coded like before. Themes are switchable at my discretion. I guess I wouldn’t mind having a few user selectable themes whereby the entire site changes to the mood of the user. Or being able to change the look of the site by season, would be awesome. Its a little difficult at the moment. Even for someone of my skill ;D

I had the idea ages ago of using php to change the background and site depending on the hour of day. But the entire style and layout was different. Since then I’ve seen the idea on a few sites and the idea is not as appealing.

So in my case the solution is as follows. If you know about css files you know that they are extremely kewl way to layout websites and to style them. Thats the key right there. You can have multiple style sheets on one page. If you make each one carry out a different task eg. one to layout the whole site and one for all the fonts, headings, colors etc you can change the site much more easily. The idea being you can target changes to the layout or the look rather than a hope and prey method.

Best advise I can give is to start off with clean code that way you can build upon it, rather than starting from scratch every time and html & css coding using xhtml is a very good start.

I’m working on some new html / web building guides. I’ve only just recently started. Its something I wouldn’t normally do. But I am doing and I’m quite happy about. If anyone else wants to tag along in the group you’re more than welcome.

I don’t confess to being awesome, but being shown the right way and where to look is a good a start as any.

So looking forward to that, and penning some plans down for my own stuff.

Recently I was asked to put some input into a site for a photographer. They wanted something easy to use and would look and display images at their best.
There are a few alternatives one can use. In my opinion a flash based gallery is a good option. For this particular site I decided the gallery at http://imagevuex.com/ would be ideal. Its highly configurable and editable. Also it comes with the source files so you can tweak until your heart is content.
There are free flash based web gallery’s too. And also lots of php / mysql versions.

Popular free flash gallery
http://www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer/

Another free flash gallery
http://www.webworksite.com/photogallery.shtml

Simple php thumbnail and page generator
http://www.flash-here.com/downloads/fhimage.html

Also not to forget Coppermine photo gallery php based
http://coppermine.sf.net/

I read a few blogs too, there are a few others. But I’ll start small with the list.

First up is Annie’s blog.

She writes “Annie is the only child of her mother, and the fifth child of her father. No, her conception was not an accident. She plows through books like bullets through butter, and though currently disguised in skirts and smiles, she retains remnants of her life as a teenaged punk. She has a cat, the memory of a pilfered scooter, a sweet tooth, and true aficion for both squirrels and Buffy. She’s really bad about e-mailing, but you can reach her at anniet at gmail dot com.”

She is a writer and secretly I wish I could write as well as her.

Waah, I feel cheated and violated. Apperently there is no such thing as beautiful women any more.
Or at least without the help of PhotoShop.

I realised a while ago when I learned how to use Photoshop to fix a few photos how powerful it was. Later it struck me how no image is too perfect for PS. The realisation hit me when I was working on a photo of a flower, for a particular site. The flower was very pretty. But only if the hue was slightly more, the colour more red and if those spots were not there. That could be easily corrected.

Thats when it hit me. No image is too good for Photoshop, or maybe for us anymore.

We’re not stupid we know image editing has been used in adverts, magazines, photos and even film for a while.

Glenn Feron’s portfolio is definitely worth a look.

You can see how no one is pretty enough. From Alicia Keyes, all three members of Desitinys Child, heck not even Hale Berry.

Check out the link and roll you cursor over the image to see it in its original form.

Well the pressure is going to be on celebs to look even more amazing or I should say the person who edits the photo’s.

I guess the rest of us can carry on looking, err normal!

Before

After

Web projects need love too! Especially any which matter. Just like a car has certain needs and requires repairing to keep it running a finished web project does too.

These can often be written into the contract whereby the designer/developer are paid for further changes or they are required to maintain the site for a period of time. Often times once its done its done. Dynamic or scripted sites tend to need more care over the longer run. This mainly due to security issues or requirements changing.

Personal projects are interesting as often times they can still remain unfinished. Also they have a funny way of showing you they need care. Sometimes its just easier to start again.

Don’t abandon projects which you’ve built with care.

Have been doing a lil bit of php work. Haven’t done much web work in a long time. Not sure why. Probably hasn’t been of interest to me for various reasons.

Anyway I’ve always wanted my own cms system. I attempted creating one originally for a site similar to this, but it proved too difficult and due to frustration I gave up.

I searched around high and low for something half decent which did what I wanted but nothing at the time really was that good. Since then there are some really good open source systems Mambo being a good one.

Whilst working on the cms I did learn quite a bit about keeping files in order. Something which any half decent web person can do but with a cms you need to have just a little bit of extra care.

Recently had a bit of web work thrown my way which required the user to easily update there site. I’ve managed to recycle my old cms files and have made good gains by hacking various scripts from the web and with the help of my php/mysql book

Not sure what it is with me but I have to be in the mood for doing what I’m doing otherwise there is no point.

Especially with the weather being good one can be out chasing women, rather than sat at a comp worrying about why mysql doesn’t want to play ball. Ya know its a huge dilemma ; )

Slowly slowly major site over hauling happening.

Talk about CSS pain. Just completed fixing CSS bugs for this template. Worked fine in most browswers but check this, they were bugs in FireFox >_< . Solution in the end was to have div wraps around the content and the menu. By not making the content float the green box around the entire site stretches all the way down. The next problem is to get the menu in the intended place. The way to do this is to use a wrap for the menu, called menuouter in my work and position:absolute; then using the top: and left: tags in css slowly move the baby up in place.

#menuouter {
top:0px;
left:0px;
position:absolute;
width:155px;
height:30px;
background-color:#FFCC00;
}

Since you can’t see where the menu wrap div actually is best thing to do is to give the menu wrap a width and height then tile a background image or give it a backgroung colour then position the div up. Then once its in the right place correct the width, finally moving the div tag behind the tag of the menu.

Viola! much pain. Nearly made me open flash. Luckily sanity prevailed.